A Poem in the Stead of Killing My Coworkers
Elliott batTzedek

All I want to say to everyone and everything is
Get the fuck away from me!

Hardly the stuff of poetry.
But why not? It is the most primal

human emotion, older than love,
more visceral than hunger.

It was Get the fuck away from me!, not estrus
not drought, not the invention of iron smelting, that

brought us migration, boats, weapons, and wheels.
And fire too, I suppose, for what denotes Respect

my personal space! more clearly than flames
and hot coals on the end of big stick?

This brain is on fire and this poem
is a big stick so don’t even consider

getting any closer.

Not today. Not until someone
cleans up this damn mess.